3I/ATLAS Bizarre Jets: Could Ancient Chinese Text Hold The Answer to The Anomaly?

It's the cosmic equivalent of a forensic cold case, spanning more than two millennia: did an ancient Chinese star map correctly catalogue a celestial object that modern science now suspects might be alien technology?

The interstellar comet known prosaically as 3I/ATLAS is no longer just a source of intrigue for astronomers; it has become a central piece in the ferocious online debate about extraterrestrial life. Its non-solar trajectory — its clear status as an interloper from deep space — already set it apart. But it is the comet's strange, 'anomalous' behaviour that continues to defy natural explanation, leading respected figures like Harvard's Avi Loeb to entertain the possibility that it is, in fact, an artificial probe.

However, this view is met with staunch resistance from the scientific establishment, with leading planetary scientists openly dismissing Loeb's hypothesis as 'irresponsible speculation' that ignores the known complexities of cometary physics.

Now, one analyst is drawing a direct parallel between the comet's baffling geometry and the Mawangdui Silk atlas, an extraordinary document from 300 BC. This isn't just about finding vague resemblances; it's about a systematic, 29-class catalogue of comet morphology created by ancient Chinese astronomers. When examining a newly enhanced copy of this silk atlas, the resemblance of certain 'forked broom-star' depictions — with their rigid, symmetrical branching — to what we observe from 3I/ATLAS today is simply remarkable.

These prehistoric observers, working without the benefit of modern optics, were not sketching fantasy; they were performing early comparative astrophysics. They captured directional geometry, rotational signatures, and behavioural categories. And, crucially, they documented features that remain impossible to reconcile with a standard, solar-driven comet.

The 3I/ATLAS Enigma: Symmetrical Jets and Ancient Warnings

The core problem with 3I/ATLAS that sparks the extraterrestrial debate is the nature of its plumes. Current data from the Hubble, the JWST, and even sophisticated amateur imaging (including work by Ray's Astrophotography and M. Jäger) have repeatedly documented straight, rigid, oppositely directed jets — a phenomenon known as 'bidirectional ejection' — emerging from 3I/ATLAS.

A natural comet is often described as a 'dirty snowball', melting under the sun's heat: the resulting gases should typically be pushed away, forming a diffuse tail opposite the direction of the sunlight. The silk drawings, however, show 'dual opposing tendrils' that appear like engineered struts, entirely inconsistent with the expected single-direction outflow of a natural outgassing body. One Mawangdui class even displays a central nucleus with two symmetrical plumes emerging on opposite axes — a shape nearly indistinguishable from the anomalous structure NASA highlighted in ATLAS's late-November halo.

The second anomaly, equally confounding, is captured in the ancient classification of 'long-tailed stars that move contrary to the winds of heaven'. In simple terms, this describes objects whose tails point in the 'wrong' direction relative to the sun.

This is exactly the 'anti-tail' signature that 3I/ATLAS has displayed — a geometry that requires either a highly specific, orientation-based illusion, extremely fine dust aligned by non-standard forces, or, controversially, artificial collimation.

The profound nature of these ancient observations is amplified by their historical context. The Chinese observers interpreted such backward-facing comae as omens of inversion, disruption, or cosmic correction, a belief that finds resonance in Emperor Guangwu's declaration in 31 AD: 'Yin and yang have mistakenly switched, and the sun and moon were eclipsed'.

Their astronomical archives even record that the 'man from heaven dies' at the exact moment of Jesus' crucifixion, occurring thousands of miles away. This demonstrates a powerful cultural and scientific literacy for interpreting complex sky behaviour and disturbances in celestial order. These were, in effect, forensic astrophysical interpretations made without modern instruments.

Harvard's Hypothesis vs. The Scientific Establishment: Deciphering 3I/ATLAS

While the Chinese astronomers obviously didn't see 3I/ATLAS specifically, the author of this analysis argues that they preserved observational categories based on real celestial events that, like ATLAS today, simply defied natural comet behaviour. The deeper question is whether the patterns they preserved across millennia correlate with physics we do not yet understand or, more provocatively, with engineering we have not yet imagined.

Fast-forward two millennia, and we are now equipped with instrumentation to truly interrogate these anomalies. Specialists like Avi Loeb are actively applying this lens, examining 3I/ATLAS's non-gravitational acceleration and, crucially, its unexplained narrow-band OH absorption lines at 1665/1667 MHz, captured days before perihelion. These spectral 'fingerprints' of chemicals do not fit the normal profile of a water-ice comet and suggest a far more complex structure or composition.

The argument is becoming intensely polarised. While proponents point to the structural symmetry and the unidirectional jets as evidence of potential technology — a pattern the Mawangdui Silk atlas seems to have noted long ago — skeptics maintain that these are merely rare, natural phenomena that lie at the extreme edge of cometary physics, and that shouting 'aliens' is unhelpful.

As Dec. 19 approaches — the date of the object's closest pass to Earth — every new frame of data becomes critical in resolving this debate. The Mawangdui Silk reminds us that civilisations before us recognised when something in the sky was truly behaving unlike any natural comet. With 3I/ATLAS, we are watching the same category of 'heavenly disruption', this time with instrumentation capable of determining whether its anomalies stem from physics we do not yet understand, or engineering we have not yet imagined.

The debate over 3I/ATLAS isn't just a modern scientific controversy; it's a cosmic mystery two millennia in the making. Whether you align with the 'alien technology' hypothesis or the 'unfamiliar comet' camp, the Mawangdui Silk atlas forces us to confront the possibility that ancient observers were not mistaken in cataloguing objects that defy natural cometary behaviour. All eyes must now turn to Dec. 19, when the object makes its closest pass to Earth and new data becomes available.